Five Earths, All in a Row

[Prince Charon]

The first thread for this setting started on December 17, 2012, and to my surprise, I do have something here for the tenth anniversary:

Apocrypha: An Alternate Five Earths setting: Bridges out of Time, Part I

One of the possible alternates of the Five Earths setting (that is to say, a set of ideas that I mostly didn't use) involves the Earths being connected by all having portals to a few interconnected pocket dimensions (newly discovered or newly appearing on the Modern Earth), and running into each other that way. This version of the setting would have had more of a slow start, since there wouldn't have been anything obvious like new Earths appearing in the sky, just unexpected creatures and people appearing out of caves and such (if the 2013-German police (or GSG 9) encountered a group of armed men dressed as Waffen-SS troops, they wouldn't be immediately inclined to believe that these Nazis were from another dimension, after all). One of the portals/bridging dimensions might have been between instances of Earth's Moon, though, and I plan on using that idea in a later part of this AU, when I get there.

The 'magic' of the setting functions pretty much like canon for Five Earths, being various uses of psi abilities, either directly or through astral entities, with Path/Book Magic being a common way to focus the mind, and the usual way to get astral entities to work with you. The portals, especially the weirder ones, leading to and from the bridging dimensions are much like the ones leading between the various Earths in the main setting, being somewhere between powerful psychic magic and sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic to us. The more complex the portal, the more likely it is to have some sort of strange, inhuman intelligence attached to it. (Gamewise, if you think you've found a way to paradox a portal, be aware that it only works if the GM agrees, and if they don't agree, this line is license for the GM to have something strange and annoying happen if you try.)

I've decided to do a bit with this occasionally, as sort of a mental palate cleanser.

These Earths would have differed in various ways from the 'canon' Earths of this setting:

*The narrative purposes of the Fantasy Earth are served by several of the bridging dimesions, collectively, and to a lesser degree, by Clockpunk Earth.

*Clockpunk Earth is a few decades earlier, circa 1534 (Anne Boleyn has given Henry VIII a son, and thus will keep her head), but should otherwise be pretty similar.

*Steampunk Earth, circa 1876: Had an earlier and more mysterious point of divergeance - no Haversham's, just people developing abilities that were rare or non-existant previously, starting around 1795. Charles Babbage built an early Difference Engine in 1807, and sold a Mechanical Tabulator to the Royal Artillery in 1809. An early clank was presented to Emperor Napoleon I in 1812. Clanks grew sufficiently widespread that by the 1850s, it was generally agreed that slavery was economically unsustainable, and the constitutional amendment that ended it was passed in 1860, with slavery becoming illegal in all US states and territories by 1869.

*Dieselpunk Earth, circa 1938: This world was much like the Dieselpunk Earth that is canon to the Five Earths setting, until the 1920s, when the American Meritocratic and Technocratic Party (colloquially just 'the Meritocrats') came into existance. The party gained enough power after the Great Depression began that the men who in our timeline were accused of the Business Plot (and on canon Dieselpunk Earth were serious about it) chose instead to co-opt the Meritocrats. Over the course of the 1930s, the Meritocratic Party effectively absorbed the dixiecrats, and was gradually shifted by the Plotters and dixiecrats to become a fascist party in all but name (while still spouting a lot of rhetoric in favor of meritocracy, and some in favor of technocracy). Due to so much of the party's power being held by the 'Solid South,' the Meritocrats are also sometimes called 'the Confederacy.' The Republicans and Northern Democrats made an agreement, inevitably called 'the Union', to support each other where possible against the Meritocrats. This America has not fallen to another civil war yet, but there is a risk that it might, especially as the Republican-Northern Democrat Union's foreign policy is an armed neutrality, slightly supportive of the Allies, while the Meritocrats are strongly supportive of the Axis Powers, though they fall a bit short of calling to join the Axis... for now. This Earth has fewer superheroes and supervillains than canon Dieselpunk Earth, and less magitech, but has more Pulp heroes and villains, and roughly as many psychics and magic-users in general.

*Infopunk Earth, circa 2012: It would have started out the same, but evolved differently after the portals became accessible (much less money and other resources spent on space travel, for example, due to much-reduced perceived need). There would probably still have been some superheroes and 'magic' showing up, though.

*Cyberpunk Earth, circa 2027: This Earth is a partially After the End sort of setting, where WWIII occurred in late 1962 (the Cuban Missle Crisis went rather worse for everyone), but only destroyed civilization in a few areas. Elements of GURPS Cyberworld would likely be included, and aspects of Cthulhupunk might have been (partly due to the effects of radiation in a setting where psionic potential is partially genetic). Battlesuits and small (SM+1 to SM+3) mecha are fairly common in areas that can afford them. For those who follow GURPS Infinite Worlds, the current date on Cyp-Earth is the same as on Homeline and Centrum.

continued next post...